Pablo Godel, ServerGrove

Pablo Godel is a developer and the cofounder of ServerGrove company. He provides Web hosting services for Symfony and PHP.

Interview recorded on June 8th 2012 during Symfony Live Paris conference.

Since when do you know and use Symfony?

It's been three years I started with Symfony 1. I was actually using Zend framework but I was looking for a fullstack framework. I found Symfony thanks to a friend of mine who recommended it. After discovering it more, I saw that the community around Symfony was really big .Then I started to use it and I really liked it. Eventually it became Symfony 2. So I'd say it was a good decision to choose Symfony!

Why did you found a company specialized in web hosting services, particularly dedicated to Symfony and PHP?

Well, as good as they are, they could have a lack of system administration skills, developers are not experimented on systems. So, we try to build tools for them to deploy more easily websites or applications. So they can focus on development rather than deployment issues. That's, for the company, the reason to be.

Could you please summarize your Symfony Live 2012 conference?

My conference was based on my experience with our customers. Indeed, it started with a customer who didn't have the knowledge to manage servers, in order to understand what's going on when something goes wrong.
So I listed what things could help developers to do a better job on system administration. It could be helpful for them the next time they'll go to get a job: if they get asked about system administration, they could make the difference thanks to their administration system knowledge.

What is your general feedback of Symfony Live?

This is my third Symfony Live. This is great to come to Paris and meet all the Symfony developers. So far, the experience is good and talks are nice. This is really what we are looking for.